Thursday Thirteen Things No One Knows By Looking At Me

1. I am afraid of fish.

2. I can only sleep on my right side, because my left hip is the one that suffered a sciatic nerve injury during childbirth. I sleep on the right side of the bed too, and as a result of this, I frequently have a small bruise on my forehead from hitting it on my bedside table.

3. I no longer do any of the following things: bite my nails, smoke, or eat ice cream on a regular basis. I do still miss them all, though.

4. I love to knit, but I'm not sure how good at it I actually am.

5. I only floss for about a week right before I see the dentist, thinking that'll fool him into thinking that I floss all the time. I doubt he is impressed by my lame attempt at dental hygene.

6. I wear a bra all the time, even when I sleep.

7. The smell of Doritos is probably one of the worst smells I've ever experienced.

8. If I could only eat one kind of food for the rest of my life, it would be Mexican.

9. I don't really understand how the designated hitter rule works when the American League plays the National League.

10. I played soccer in 10th grade because I had a crush on the coach.

11. I don't think Anne Rice's books are that great.

12. I am a picky eater, but a relatively unsophisticated one.

13. I'm not pregnant, but Kimberly is!!! I am so excited I can barely stand it.

Yay for Trina joining Thursday Thirteen. This list was her suggestion.

And, oh yeah. I am going to try and do NaBloPoMo this year, so be prepared for a lot of inane stuff from me. Haiku about my laundry, that kind of thing.

What's Got Two Thumbs And Doesn't Give A Crap? Molly.

So, Dumbledore is gay.

So is Barney Frank, Oscar Wilde, and Melissa Ethridge, and they all do things that I think are really good, so the only thing I'm losing any sleep over is the fact that the National Organization of Ignorant Tightasses will probably use this as an excuse to burn (figuratively if not literally) books while simultaneously fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite a study being released last week which says that legalizing abortion doesn't make it any more prevalent, just safer, and modernizing the death penalty, although we're one of four countries in the world that practices capital punishment on citizens convicted as minors. The other countries: Iran, Syria, North Korea. Definitely a list we want to be on.

Gee whiz, I'm thrilled with the state of American politics this week.

Thursday Thirteen Jobs I Would Have Had

I know a secret. So there.

I don't have any news on how the inspection went yesterday, because there wasn't an inspection. This is a long and stupid story that I don't have the time or the interest to tell at the moment, but after the inspection (that didn't happen) I went to Sam's Club, and as I was leaving Sam's Club, I got a phone call from a person. That phone call was about a phone call that that person got, and it was good news. Great news, even. This is all a big secret right now, and it's not my secret to tell, but I am happy beyond all comprehension for this person and virtually bubbling over with the news. So, whoever-you-are, let me extend my deepest, most heartfelt public WHOO-HOOOO!!!! on your behalf.

When I was in fourth grade, I wanted to be an actress when I grew up, even though I am not particularly talented in any marketable way. At various other times, I considered other careers, but the only thing I was ever really good at was writing, and so I became a writer. If I hadn't been a writer, here are 13 other things I might have done.

1. Photographer. I started college as a photojournalism student. I would never have made a good photojournalist, because I am fundamentally sort of lazy and lack the technical skills that would make me a good photographer. But I did like the sloshing around in the photo lab and the high of having photos published.

2. Professional athlete. I skied competitively in high school, and considered it as a career option. Unfortunately, I am not all that athletic and I had a tendency to hurt myself a lot.

3. Lawyer. I have a lot of righteous indignation, and one would think that would make people a good lawyer, and probably it does, in part, but that was about as interested as I could force myself to be in a law career.

4. Ski instructor. See number two. It's a great way to spend a winter, but it doesn't pay that well and it's most often coupled with some other occupation, like bartender or phone sex operator, so as to be able to afford to live in a ski resort town.

5. Pastry chef. They have the cushiest job in a restaurant. They come in in the morning, bake a lot of profiteroles and pipe them full of creme anglaise, and leave before the kitchen becomes a teeming hellhole by 4 p.m.

6. Personal chef. This is a really swell gig. A client calls you up, fills out a survey of likes, dislikes, needs, etc., then you come up with a menu, go to their house with groceries and other implements of kitchen destruction, cook their meals, and store in the individual portions. You work when you want to and people with no time to cook get healthy, home-prepared food. Awesome.

7. Bartender. Like Kimberly, I like the idea of someone telling me all their problems while we drink tequila. If therapy were like that, I'd totally be on board.

8. Diabetic educator. I considered this career after I was diagnosed with diabetes at 25. Then I found out that diabetic educators are nurses, and...I'm not so much with the science.

9. Mobility instructor. In college, people used to ask me how Kimberly got around, and in my annoyance at not actually being paid as her official spokesperson, I liked to tell them, "She walks, mostly." The actual answer to this question is that there are people called mobility instructors who help people learn how to get from one place to another. I firmly believe that if my mother had a mobility instructor, she would not give such sucky directions. Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, where I'm from, has one of the only graduate programs for mobility instruction in the country.

10. Technical writer. They are extremely well-paid.

11. Architect. I don't think that I realized how much math was involved.

12. Domestic violence counselor. This was how my righteous indignation translated once I realized that I couldn't be a lawyer without going to law school. I quickly became quite discouraged with the fact that many people who go looking for help from a domestic violence counselor are not looking for the kind of help that a domestic violence counselor can provide.

13. Writer. I am blown away by the fact that I can do what I do for a living. I feel like I'm getting away with something every day that I get to do this. I feel like I'm getting better at what I do all the time, and helping people sort of at the same time. That's quite an endorsement for my line of work, isn't it? "Helping people sort of."

Kimberly and Trina have Thursday Thirteen's up too. Read.

Thursday Thirteen Will Return After These Messages

We have home inspection today, so I am not really here. I will try my very hardest to post Thursday Thirteen this week, but make sure you check out Kimberly's. I am quite certain that her Thursday Thirteen will surprise me, as she always seems to be surprising me.

Dan and I met five years ago this week. I have been thinking about what it's like to fall for someone you work with, like Dan and I did. When love is no good, then work is no good, and when it's good, no matter how crappy the job is, it's still pretty great, so meeting the person you want to spend the rest of your life with at the place where you spend the rest of your life is not like just dating.

I am currently a little obsessed with reruns of "The West Wing" and the storyline of Josh and Donna. In honor of having met Dan five years ago, here's a video from "The West Wing" that reminds me that my happily ever after started at work, and so much of who I am and what I have is because we took a chance on each other. Happy Qdobannaversary, babe.

Mother Nature's Son...Um, I Mean Daughter

I'm sitting in my office, watching a spider crawl up the wall, listening to an all-Beatles internet radio station because I left my Ipod at home for my nephew to listen to, and thinking about instant karma. The zen concept, not the John Lennon song.

If I kill this spider, will I be run over by a semi on the way home? According to my understanding of karma, it's a little more complicated than that, a gradiose version of paying it forward only to be rewarded in some other lifetime. However, in the week before closing on my house, is it really a risk I am comfortable taking?

And...can I balance out killing a spider by the other nice things I've done today: resetting the timer on the coffeemaker so that my mother-in-law would have fresh coffee when she got up, leaving my laptop and Ipod for my technology-deprived 18-year-old nephew who is working his tail off for us in getting us moved, and letting a Hispanic guy in a Mazda merge into the space in front of me on Kenilworth Ave. this morning?

While I wrote this, the spider wandered off, and it's all fifteen minutes of wondering wasted, except that it's got me thinking about karma this week, when the goodwill of the cosmos seems to be a topic of great importance indeed for me.

Just Wondering...

...If conservatives blog. I don't know any conservative bloggers. I don't really know very many conservatives. My husband works with one very conservative teacher, but he's too busy doing whatever it is that conservatives do to blog. Which is...what? Attending Right To Life meetings? Home-schooling their children? Listening to Amy Grant CD's? I am woefully uninformed when it comes to the daily habits of the far right.

Kimberly and I have had this conversation before: how is the balance of power possibly so evenly distributed in this country? I barely know any conservatives at all. Conservatives in the D.C. area are sort of like albino squirrels: they're so rare that I stop walking and gape whenever I see one. I mean, clearly they're around here somewhere, because this is, y'know, our nation's capitol, but they must have their own places they go, because everybody I ever see is wearing a "Hillary '08" t-shirt and Crocs and feeding their kid organic fruit. I would guess that there are more conservatives in the Midwest and the Bible Belt. Come to think of it, southwest Michigan really is distressingly Dutch Reformed. Let me just say, those guys are definitely not wearing those Hillary t-shirts.

Of course, I live in Prince George's County. Everyone here is black or hispanic, except, evidently, for me. In Hyattsville, there are quite a few lesbians too, but I'm pretty sure they're not voting the GOP ticket. P.G. County actually votes pretty heavily democrat. This is the wrong place for me to be looking for conservatives.

That being said, if I checked the party affiliations of my blogroll, I would guess I'd be hard-pressed to find a single person who voted for The Decider in 2004. I could be wrong, I guess, but it's possible I could be ignoring all the thoughts and feelings of conservatives.

Is it a Sign? Probably not, but it feels like one.

Playing on internet radio as the loan officer calls to tell me that Bank of America has issued final approval on our home loan and scheduled us to close on October 20th: "Here Comes The Sun," performed by Nina Simone.

It has indeed been a long, cold, lonely winter, and I wouldn't have gotten through this week without you, internet. I heart you.